


Be Yourself

by Demondogweed



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Conditioning, Gore, Illegal Activities, Neither are exactly ok., PTSD, Vomiting, alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 03:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17697023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demondogweed/pseuds/Demondogweed
Summary: Post-CYM, the twin diamonds try to adjust to their freedom.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter references these two things;
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/16098182/chapters/38550998
> 
> http://demonsanddogweeds.tumblr.com/post/181781818004/gritty-homeworld-black-star-bg-and-cs-the-black

The truth of living as an ill-fitting diamond or even an off-colour on Homeworld had been always the same. Hide, trick, lie and steal. They will never give you what you truly want, they will always only punish you for daring to be yourself.

Blue had lived that life, one part an ill-fitting mask that set up inane balls for White to (maybe) show up in and orders for dross to be created. Another part financing the Black Market, stealing books and knowledge like a dragon of myth collected its hoard.

And, in true rebel fashion, getting drunk on the swill your local bootlegger made.

Blue looked over her room, on the surface it was spotless. But certain whistles to the pebbles and suddenly she had access to her cabinet of alcohol. Not to mention her books or trinkets. Another whistle brought up the communicator for ordering all of this.

Wonder if BG had survived. Blue dreaded to look up the betting pools that had been set up during the fight.

“Era 3” as a sarcastic statement has almost overtaken “#lowresources”, which was something of a record.

What made her visit to her room different now, was the result of that fight. Of that week of ups and downs.

(One lucky Pearl was apparently making bank with her extremely outlandish but correct guesses during that week.)

Blue now had the freedom to voice her disagreements. More than that, she was allowed to be herself. Unlike Yellow, who had lived to serve the empire’s rules, Blue had an idea what that meant.

Blue let out a quick whistle, grabbing something resembling alcohol from her cabinet. Filling her glass and drinking it, she winced. Swill indeed, the Earth alcohol was quite a bit better.

They needed to start making better batches, soon. If Blue wanted to introduce alcohol to the wider populace, it needed to be better than the paint thinner she was used to drinking. BG was going to have her hands full going legit.

Something caught Blue’s attention in the cabinet. It was a scarf of wool in clashing colours. That wasn’t there before, maybe a pebble had put it there for her. Blue grabbed it, holding onto the rough surface. It had been too small for her for centuries, but it still held its awful saturation.

_“It doesn’t matter if we obey or not, Yellow. We’ll be punished regardless”_

_“Because you keep doing that, buying contraband with classified information! You are a diamond, can’t you act like one?”_

_“If being a diamond means blind obedience, I guess I am not one”_

Blue could almost see her younger self stand there, head held up high with unearned bravado. Propped up with stories because reality never gave her anything to work with. Words that she’d repeat to Pink, once her own spirit was broken down enough.

That young diamond, dumb and easily taken by baubles, had lived a life of desperation. But she wasn’t dead, she had never died. She had been silenced out of fear. Blue swore never to let it happen again.

Tying the scarf around her wrist, Blue let out a long whistle. An old communicator rattled to life from its hiding place.

It was time to stop lying, stealing and hiding. It was time to embrace the actual Blue, Yellow, Pink and White.

And have -fun.-


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a more serious chapter, dealing with a lot of things long-time soldiers do and what it can mean. PTSD is no joke.

In terms of culture, the Yellow Court was an oddity among the wider Homeworld. While the three other courts (because legally, the Earth gems were just a rebuilt Pink Court) were made from or the lack of emotions, the Yellow Court boasted its main cultural cornerstone as Duty.

Duty not to just the Authority, but to one’s task, to one’s teammates and to one’s ideals. While obedience was expected, it was also rewarded unlike in the Blue Court. Most of the nobility couldn’t figure out why shouldn’t a gem just be happy fulfilling their intended purpose?

Those gems rarely had to stand up in a battlefield covered in dead things, be gem deep in blood or organs. To dull their mind to the mere act of -killing- a living being for the Empire. To watch as their comrades were shattered or -worse- by the enemy.

The rewards were a meagre consolation to the crude reality the Yellow Court’s finest had endured. The loss of their innocence was hardly as cheap as a prism or a respected position.

Of course, Steven would tell Yellow killing and colonization were wrong. He would explain to her how gems could always find an alternative way of living. Yellow did believe it, she had witnessed Amethyst of the Crystal Gems be social and lacking most or even all the conditioning her less fortunate kin had.

Where Steven’s theory hit a snag, was when it came to gems like her. Ones who had seen combat and death already. Unlearning millennia of training was hard, he had to have noticed it by the ease she had attacked Blue. Once the fight started, there was no holding back or mercy. It was either you or your foe dead. It didn’t matter who it was, as Yellow had realised days after the incident at the mecha.

Yellow and her most elite soldiers were dulled to the sights and sounds of gore and death. It was abnormal for gems, who had no need to hunt or kill for sustenance. Most barely tolerated the sight of -eating-, nevermind witnessing what an organic being looked all gored up.

It wasn’t just the sight of an organic torn to shreds that she was null to. Shards on the ground or extraction fluid leaking out of her were far too common. Gems as a species were quite deadly, but Yellow had witnessed and faced landmines, blades, explosions and energy blasts enough that she knew to be complacent was suicide.

It did make watching horror movies quite the bore, though. Yellow had decided to spend her newly acquired free-time studying humans and their ways. Their love for fear was curious, especially how commonly it was tied with the fear of an extraterrestrial being with acid blood coming to kill them.

She guessed being an apex predator with total planetary dominance got -dull- eventually.

War movies, however, were another thing. They were listed as thrillers and drama and had a high maturity rating (Steven wasn’t allowed to watch anything above 13, apparently) so Yellow hoped they would stir something within her.

She ended up trying to empty a stomach she did not have onto the palace floor, the vestigial programming of her gem overtaking her body.  Apocalypse Now was aptly named, indeed.

It did somewhat bring Yellow hope that she and her elites weren’t alone in their dulled empathy. Humanity had the exact same issues with their soldiers, down to their military training being dehumanizing.

Being reminded of just how bad it had once been, however, made Yellow’s mind reach yet another dark spot. Rest was not needed for gems, though ones like Blue often used it to recharge their energy levels. To Yellow, gaining energy from rest was impossible.

_She’d look into the eyes of a drone, staring blindly at her. No mind of its own, even if White wasn’t controlling it. The old thing would attack her with the intention to kill. Blades cut into her, punches caused bruises._

Every single sun-cycle, for most of her younger years. Even worse if rules had been broken. She had to get up, she had to fight, shatter if need be. White had plenty of old drones to use, those maddened by their faulty programming.

White had made her into a shatterer, dug the reflex to fight so deep into her that she’d attack Blue without question. Millenia of war had only heightened her senses, taken away her compassion and left behind nothing but tempered steel.

Yet, not even a month ago, all of that training and conditioning hadn’t been enough. White had stolen Yellow’s body to hurt Steven. Yellow had hazy memories of White controlling her limbs and mouth, forcing her to expose her weaknesses.

What if she had intended to never let Yellow be herself again? Just leave her like Pink’s old pearl, a drone without a mind.

Yellow’s stomach lurched once more, extraction fluid dripping down her chin like organic drool. It hurt to go through the past like that, to look into the face of her creator and see how much she had been wasted.

The general got on her feet, letting the old conditioning lead her to Blue’s room. Weakness was not a dirty word when it was Blue.

Of course, Yellow had forgotten the legalization of alcohol.

“Hhey, Yellow” Blue said, leaning against a wall with a glass in her hand. Trying to look more proper than her state allowed. Yellow snarled, marching into the room and closing the door.

“Blue, are you intoxicated on work hours!?” Yellow snapped, feeling her hackles bristle. Blue eyed her with squinted eyes.  
“No? It’s night you windbag. What’s with you, you look like you ate something wrong” Blue asked, motioning to the extraction fluid on Yellow’s chin and armour.  
“I…err…Can I stay here for a bit?”  
“Sure”

Yellow sat in a corner, hugging her knees as she tried to centre her poor mind. Blue, naturally, decided to lean onto her and chuckle a bit. Yellow let herself shake, trying to not let the mask cover her once more. She did not want to harm Blue.  
“Blue, why do you tolerate me still, after everything?” Yellow mumbled a question, sighing deeply. Blue looked at her, squinting her eyes more and letting out a tired grumble.  
“Oh fuck off, Yellow”  
“What?”  
“You heard me! Fuck off. You always do this when you’re all self-doubting, come to me to get you fucking worth back. Not bothering to actually DO anything about it yourself, just leaning on me for kind words. Well, guess what? You can’t take it all back. You can’t fix the ones you killed and shattered. You just have to start bettering yourself now”

Blue’s outburst left Yellow staring at her twin, it was one thing for Blue to be snappy, but to be so blunt was rare. Especially with that amount of cursing.  
“I’m assuming that is the alcohol talking” Yellow muttered, giving Blue a glare. Blue answered it, grabbing hold of Yellow’s chin a bit too roughly.  
“I can handle my drink, Yellow. This isn’t about just you, it is about us”  
“Us?”  
“Yes, what we have done. What we did to Pink, what we did to Steven. I don’t know if his gems can ever forgive us. I know that garnet and Lapis Lazuli don’t. But also, what White did to us”

Yellow listened to Blue rant, the alcohol had loosened her tongue enough that the diplomat spoke of her greatest fears in a candid way. It was, as much as Yellow tried to mentally deny it, refreshing to hear a honest Blue.  
“I don’t think I can forgive White, Yellow. Not after what happened. Sure, she wanted to be ‘perfect’, but fuck if that doesn’t justify the cycles of abuse. Pink didn’t know the amount and it was still too much for her. What about us, why can’t we too just leave and find a place to stay” Blue vented, now studying her bottle of alcohol rather absentmindedly.  
“If we leave, no one is there to hold her back. She’ll just hide in her head once more and start thinking she is perfect.”

“We can’t, Yellow, I think we already saw how much we could do in terms of standing up to her. We were nothing more than rubies to her, the defective amethyst took longer to resist than -we.-”

Silence fell upon them, as awkward as it had once been. When they were young and uncertain.

“You are wrong, Blue. You never gave up trying to find something more out of life than blind obedience and duty. You fought back and Pink followed your example. I just followed what White told me to do” Yellow admitted, wincing at the far too easily recalled memories. Her walls had been torn down and rebuilding them was going to take a while. If she wanted them back at all.

Blue moved closer, enough that Yellow could feel her soft hair falling over her.  
“Yellow, you did all you could for me. You shielded me from the worst of White’s abuse and you protected Pink as well. But this wallowing isn’t you, you need to find a way to get past it” Blue spoke, her tone comforting once more if a bit slurred by the alcohol. That made Yellow smirk just a bit.

“Drinking that poison is yours?”  
“Making this legal and letting gems feel free to get drunk is. So much of the Black Market is about choice, even if it is a bad one”

Yellow thought about it, the new freedoms gems were given. Night cycles were free time to explore, alcohol and most contraband goods were now legal. Payment for a work well done, rather than bought by money. They weren’t about to mimic -all- of humanity, after all.

In this new Homeworld, was there a place for her armies? Or her? Would they need to find a way to seek the-ra-py?  
“I fear that I am forever a live wire with its coating stripped off, dangerous to everything around me. I don’t know how to not be a killer” she admitted, groaning as she leaned against the wall. Looking outside the window, she could see all of her colonies. They were tiny specks in the darkness, but she could pinpoint each one regardless.  
“We will always need a killer, Yellow. Even the Crystal Gems discorporate gems, who knows how many organics they have killed. But you don’t have to be -only- a killer anymore, nor feel you are broken” Blue mused, wrapping her arm around Yellow’s shoulders.

“What we need more, though, is defence. We cannot allow White to ever get us like that, ever EVER again. If this new thing is to work, we need to be safe. No more White Pearls, no more danger of being controlled. That is where we need your expertize at being a fighter”

_That was a good point_ , Yellow thought. Blue had always been the more sensitive one regarding White, to a fault. But what had once been nothing more than a childish paranoia, was now the stark reality. As much effort as White put into trying to interact with them now, it was all on her terms. If White chose to just revert back to her old ways, there was no Steven to save them this time.

They had to be their own shield. Who better than the gems jaded by combat and war, who would not baulk at being told to hold down White’s power. Or find a solution to combating it. It was heresy, of course, to consider such methods.

But this was Era 3, the old ways had to give for the new.


End file.
